Please Like Me shows what happens when broadcasters and producers can’t agree on what they’re looking at. The ABC is advertising this new series as an offbeat comedy because it’s written by Josh Thomas, a celebrated comic with a string of festivals to his name. However a few episodes in and its abundantly clear this show is more drama than comedy, more concerned with problems than punchlines.

Josh plays Josh, a 20 year old man who has just broken up with his long-time girlfriend after she points out what’s obvious to her: “You’re gay.” Josh is not so sure but coincidentally falls into an explicitly physical relationship with Geoffrey the same day. In the meantime his family life is exploding – his mother has attempted suicide, his divorced father is wracked with guilt and his Christian Aunty Peg is providing dubious support. But the real issue is how Josh is coping with his new discovery. He likes Geoffrey’s company but is uncomfortable with his kisses; he’s drawn to his accepting personality and good looks, but is terrified by the prospect of anal sex. The series suggests Josh just needs time to come to terms with what everyone else already knows, but could there be another explanation?

Please Like Me supplies its own good reasons for why Josh might not be a man discovering his ‘true nature’. His parent’s broken relationship, his emotionally distant father, his dysfunctional relatives all provide equally natural explanations for Josh’s social awkwardness and his need to be liked, and those might be reason enough for his sudden sexual discovery. But the only objections to his new lifestyle are from the out of date and ill-informed. Josh asks his boyfriend to get out of the car just before he arrives at his family home:

Josh: “You can’t come into the house.”

Geoffrey: “Why?”

Josh: “Because my aunt’s there and she’s really homophobic and she’s Christian.

Cliché anyone? It gets worse when we discover her drink driving and a need to confess other people’s problems undermine Aunty Peg’s moralism. Fundamentally, she’s a hypocrite. But what lies at the heart of this cartoonish representation of Jesus’ followers is an equally fundamental misunderstanding. Rejection of a lifestyle doesn’t equal fear or ignorance. You’re not Marx-ophobic if you don’t support communism. You just don’t believe it works, and might even be harmful. Likewise Christians aren’t afraid of homosexuality, they just don’t believe it works and, worse, results in divine judgment. Homosexuality might lead to Josh being liked, but it won’t lead to happiness because it leads away from God.